


Locus Minoris Resistentiae

by CharismaticEnticer



Series: Forgetting the Past and Other Impossible Things (Twice!Verse) [2]
Category: Die Anstalt
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Broken Pedestals, Character Development, Character Study, Codependency, Concussions, Crying Crying Everywhere, Depression, Fic Illustrated, Fixing the Broken Pedestal?, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Mental Anguish, Must Know Canon, Obsession, Obsessive Behaviour, Obsessive Love, One-Sided Relationship, Or Is It?, POV Third Person Limited, Pansexual Character, Present Tense, Self-Destruction, Self-Hatred, Spoilers, Weird Dialogue Style
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-05
Updated: 2013-01-05
Packaged: 2017-11-23 18:21:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/625222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharismaticEnticer/pseuds/CharismaticEnticer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to "Qui Tacet Consentire Videtur". Dub tended to avoid deeper reflection before his heart got hurt twice. Now with all the time in the world to think, maybe it is safer not to introspect, lest the heart become a place of less resistance.</p><p>
  <b>Fic Illustrated as of 10/08/15.</b>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Full of Shades

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this instalment in three chunks across the beginning of the year. This being a follow-up, I took great care with it; I even got my girlfriend to beta it for me (after being assured she would give a non-biased view). Hopefully it continues the story sufficiently... after a lot of sads from Dub first.
> 
> This part was originally written and published on January 23rd 2012. **Fic Illustrated as of 10/08/15.**
> 
> Die Anstalt © Martin Kittsteiner. The chapter titles come from "Today I Die", © Daniel Benmergui.

On the positive side, Dub isn't crying anymore.  
On the negative, he also isn't moving from his place on the floor, and hasn't for a while now.  
  
The staff are worried about him, or pretending to be. Trying to get him out of his lockdown; gently moving his arms before they fall back into place; discussing more electricity, more drastic measures, right in front of him. He knows and hears these.  
He can't bring himself to care.  
  
A part of him thinks he should. A rational non-emotional Dub, the still-in-shell Dub of a few months ago, re-emerges in his mind constantly to try and snap him out of it. Get over yourself, it says. Get over _him_. You spoke to each other exactly once. You barely know _him_. You're only physically attracted.  
 _He_ left you anyway, like everyone else has. Why cling to that?  
  
But the arguments, in their delivery, only serve to undo themselves.  
They are said in _his_ voice.  
  
 _His. Him. He._ Pronouns, not a name. Dub knows the name, but refuses to think it. The name would only make it worse, twisting his nerves and cutting deeper into him both at once.  
The physical image is bad enough. Blue on black and grey. Warmth, feathers, wings, eyes, large claws that take in and destroy. Sturdy body, small head when not under a hood of fuzz. Looks, smiles, frowns.  
He starts to shiver again at the thought of _his_ just-for-Dub promise smile. That one specific wing, the one specific claw. He still has the last, on a string around his neck. The sharp ends of the claw face inward and cut into him as he lies flat on his stomach.  
The focus on that pain, the deserved, stops him thinking about the rest of it. The pain on the inside.  
  
Not that they know. They put it down to the airport incident, maintaining he is taking longer to grieve than others would in his position.  
Technically, this isn't untrue. What Max did that day still hurts. Running off without him, never even looking back or hearing him struggle to keep up... letting five solid years of ownership fall away to insignificance in an instant.  
He tenses at the thought.  
The inner shelled Dub, sensing this, makes a comeback. You're doing that more than he did, it says. How can one conversation and a few weeks just looking at _him_ hurt more than five years?  
  
Heh. That side of him is slipping. It forgets that he was never in love with Max.  
  
Stop calling it that, it says. You had a crush on _him_ , _he_ used you for _his_ little religion boycott, it meant more to you than it did to _him_. That's it. That isn't love. That's dependency, want, need. I doubt you've ever even been in love.  
  
 _His_ voice with its arguments are beginning to sting. Dub bashes his head on the floor to keep that traitor part of him quiet. First movement for a while. Pain and stars shoot across his 'skull', another distraction from within.  
  
And a memory or two right behind it to bring the focus back.  
No, he didn't know before what love felt like. But he had - has - an idea, based on things Max has said to him. The people he put the words to never seem to stay consistent: brunette, blond, blue eyes, green, brown, female, male, genderfluid. But the words themselves, the core, come through and confirm reality.  
"Love," says the memory, "makes the world seem bright when it's around and dark when it isn't." For Dub now, the world is grey, black. Blue.  
"Love," says Max, "gets into your head and makes every thought return to that someone special." He knows this, too clearly.  
"Love," Max says with a smile (subtle, trying not to let it show more than he wants to, but a smile all the same), "means that as long as they want you around, you never leave. ...And then they never leave you either."  
Max's voice fades into _his_ in a nanosecond.  
 _I won't be the next to leave you behind. I promise._  
  
Max's someone special always left and changed.  
Max left Dub.  
 _He_ left.  
By that logic, Dub shouldn't feel so in love.  
So why does he?  
  
It is no good. It is burning his throat. Sooner or later, Dub will have to think _his_ name and risk being sliced open from within. No matter how much it hurts.  
Inner Dub disappears. Maybe it knows that outer Dub will be once again inaccessible for at least an hour.  
He puts the pieces together, constructs the image. Colors on the inside, and the outside, sandwiched around memories and _his_ touch and _his_ sound and _his_ feel. _The one_ who left him crippled on the asylum floor is almost complete, in front of him, as the rest of the world becomes a blur.  
Small, painful steps with words.  
  
 _PhD._  
 _No. Yes. First PhD, then Leader._  
 _Mastermind. Devil._  
  
Emotions fragment at the thoughts.  
Bits of rage, flame hot red. If _he_ hadn't left, he wouldn't be like this.  
  
 _Crush, interest._  
 _Promised._  
  
Bits of love and sadness and unrequite, bubbly broken blue. If he had been better, _he_ wouldn't have left.  
  
 _Love,_  
 _liar,_  
 _desire,_  
 _purpose,_  
 _existence..._  
  
Hatred of the self. Fault. All his fault. Coal black.  
  


_**Dr Wood.** _

  
On the positive side, Dub cannot cry again.  
On the negative, he can still make the hurt real. And there are many wonderful preferable options. One right there. Just look down.  
  
He beats his head. On the ground. Hard.  
He beats his head again, again, ignoring the noise from the staff. When they try to pull him from the floor, he jerks away, moving at last at least, and runs into the wall, headbutting any hard surface he can reach. Over and over and over until the pain cracks and burns.  
He beats his head into blissful unconsciousness.


	2. Painful World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the hardest part of the fic to write, partly because I started this without having a concrete ending in mind. ...That's a lie - I had two _potential_ endings, both of which had their pros and cons, story wise. Eventually, I went with the ending that would make the most sense for Dub and give me the most fic fodder... 
> 
> This part was originally written and published on April 7th 2012.

His dreams fade in and out of his consciousness and lack thereof. They are unclear, draped in a thick silver mist, for the first time since admission to the asylum.   
His waking, too, is sporadic for a while. He is shaken around every so often by the nurse, hidden in the shadows of the now-dual-purpose-it-seems recovery room, and quick to remind him (as if he needs reminding beyond the sensation of six star-tipped crowbars in his skull) that he still has a concussion.   
  
Dub rests. On and off, between sleep and wake, between muddled dreams and confused reality. Breathing and moving but not quite functional, not quite here.   
The two consistencies are the presence and the absence.   
  
Eventually, the former starts to fade. Only five of the crowbar stars, then four, two, one.  
Why do they take so long to go? The nurse clarifies this not to him but in front of him, to the curious therapist. His head has taken a number of hits over the years, she guesses; he was technically an athlete, after all. It's become weaker, more easily damaged. How'd she put it? "A place of less resistance".  
She knows of one such place. He knows two.  
  
Dub turns away when the therapist is gone; he winces at the cracking in his brain; he looks down at his chest. He might as well see exposed ribcage, understuffed.   
  
The pain itself has not fled as easily as its cause(s). Some stays higher up. Some sinks further down, tearing another scratch through his soul as it goes.   
Even when preoccupied with the stars, the cold truth still rested inside his heart. But now that he has even fewer distractions than before, now that there is no external noise and only one nurse and no denial behind pronouns, the abandonment of Dr Wood - of Max - expands in heat and rips open the organ around it, thread by thread.   
It would be stupid to inner past Dub, oddly absent. It would be merely poetic to the Dub between then and now. It would be, were it not so real, raw... **there**.   
  
Dub thinks through the damage.   
He asks himself if either of the two would hate him now for having priorities that make im/perfect sense to him. Wood over Max over himself.   
He runs through every conversation he can remember with either so many times in his head, looking for the loopholes in their promises that they exploited.   
He wonders once how he is still alive with his heart in this many little scraps.   
And he makes a plan.   
  
Passivity has only gotten the turtle so far, he decides. It has been understandable, considering his energy has been drained further from him with every misstep. But something about the stars and their sharpness gives him a perspective that a twice-fractured world could not.   
To become better, he has to stop the root cause of hurt. To stop the root cause of hurt, he has to reunite with one of the beings that left him behind. And he can't reunite with his shell, much less a raven or a human, when inside a mental institution.   
Getting to Dr Wood? Impossible. Getting to Max, failing that? Equally implausible. The idea they'd have him back after forgetting so easily? Remote.   
But he has to try.   
  
Dub has already failed to be a high performance turtle. He cannot fail at stitching the pieces of his heart back together, or at tending to the scratches, or at becoming functional once again.  
He sleeps and wakes and plans and wanders through the mist looking for himself...   
  
...  
And then all the stars are gone.  
And then he has a coherent dream at last - within, there is a key in his back. It turns slowly as he crawls, surveyed by the faceless lady.   
And then the nurse tells him it is time to return to the unconfused reality he existed in once. Or, as she puts it, the patient lounge.   
  
Dub re-emerges.   
  
After his time and focus in the black, the blue and white and yellow are blinding; he has to shield his eyes and pause to adjust. At least the colors vaguely exist again, he supposes.   
He blinks the glare away and looks around at the other four (not five, hasn't been five since he left). His routine has not been the only one eroded; others have changed too, slightly or more. How long has he been recovering? It could be a half-day, day, week. Time blends into itself, even when the lighting changes.   
The hippo has a safety pin in his mouth. The crocodile is still trembling, clinging to the blanket. The snake is shaking a rattle loudly, obsessed.   
Dolly has a sock and a bandage on her head. She tells him why without his needing to ask. She thought he had the right idea, so she tried it too, but they managed to stop her before she blacked out. She thinks he did it to forget something, which in a way he did.   
Their lives continue. Their stories go on. Dub's has to as well, with _him_ or without. So he doesn't stop to fully re-integrate. Re-integrating wastes time.   
Instead, he sits and waits for his next session with the therapist. The one who will help get him out of here.   
There is now a purpose, a point, of asking.   
  
Dub calls the human into the therapy room and tells, for the first time, the conversation before and emotions behind carrying Wood across the ocean bed. He doesn't know how he's keeping it together, and in fact almost breaks down again when he gets to the hug. But he manages. He is still a strong turtle.   
  
Though not so strong as to handle being alone.   
  
Dub wants to make sense of his not-quite-life.  
Dub wants to make sure he never gets hurt again.  
And, more than anything else...  
  
Dub wants to _go home_.


	3. Until You Came

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoa, okay, sorry for the delay. Final chapter, and a pivotal moment for this series-cum-branching-alternate-universe as a whole. My girlfriend was a brilliant help in making this so. Thanks, babycakes.
> 
> This part was originally written and published on April 13th 2012.
> 
> EDIT: Oh lord, why did I only now spot the formatting errors in italicize? Damn you sometimes AO3.

Dub has never been packaged before...at least he doesn't think so. Life prior to meeting Max is a greyscale smudge, but even then he doesn't remember being separated from his batch pseudo-lookalikes, each with a differently patterned shell, by plastic inside cardboard.  
To be in a bag in a box now is alien. He can't see beyond the pale square walls that surround him, but he can see the walls themselves behind a transparent veil, aware of his own compressed state. They remain firm, static, blockades from life itself.  
But he can't really complain about it. The time in the box will be short, and the walls (plus a drive, judging by the rumbling in the background) are the only things between him and the promised bliss of healing and closure.  
The unspoken bliss of finding _him_ intact.  
  
All the same, when he hears soft squelching fading into rhythmic clacks and the slice of the blade cutting into the box, it takes all his effort not to tip the thing over, roll his way out and go on a wild hunt for the need, bag be damned. The only things that stop him are the warm feel of human hands unwrapping him and the cold grip of... not fear, but unfamiliarity.  
His life has been a constant shifting of colors, a mural of sorts. It starts at what is now grey, moving to confusion, different colors, Maxless darkness, light, Woodless blackness, and now colors again, only vaguely like the ones he is used to.  
He surveys his new home while the human holding him now, a brown-haired woman, briefly scans the letter he had been sitting on. The room he has emerged in is clinical, almost muted, unsure as to whether it wants to be seen as blue or green. A metallic table, a chrome sink, clipboards and medical equipment in perfectly organized places on the counters. A rainbow rug highlights the six-story cabinet rested against a wall, filled with blocks and brightness and a glass case as the very top section.  
Setting the letter aside quickly, the woman (a doctor, he guesses) takes him towards the cabinet. She eyes the glass case, but something about it makes her pause, and she places him on the rug instead. Then she sets about recycling the box and bag.  
  
Dub doesn't stay there for very long. He finds his way to the table. He grabs the letter.  
He begins the search.  
  
Downstairs. The room he came out in, nothing. The hallway, nothing. The bathroom, nothing.  
The hall leads into a living room, then into a kitchen. Each room is ready for the destructive force of playtime, building block towers ripe for knocking down, dry tiles ready for wet footprints. The raven isn't among this preparation.  
The back garden gives him a hint if nothing else: a black feathery hood, the one familiarity so far, hanging on the washing line to dry amongst the jumpers and dresses.  
It also gives him a place to briefly take a breather. He hasn't moved much in the past however-many-days, so he feels stiff, cumbersome. His unstitched heart shakes in his chest. This frantic seeking might realistically be too much too soon.  
Dub takes a moment to re-calibrate his internal calender. Dull slush clumps around the garden, and the glare of the sun makes the breeze all the more biting. It is still winter, or at least the fading point between winter and spring. This, at least, is reassuring; he definitely recalls being in Germany for the Christmas period. Max had scheduled the holiday partly as a present to himself, a way of getting over the latest someone special to leave him just days befor--  
  
It is at this thought the fear fully pierces him.  
Fears.  
The first fear, "What if Dr Wood isn't actually here anymore?", is irrational. He wouldn't have been sent here if he wasn't. But the others all have very sharp points, the crowbar stars all over again.  
Dr Wood won't recognize him after their being apart.  
Even if he does, he won't desire him anymore, not in this pathetic state.  
Even if he does, what's to stop him from leaving in the future?  
And even if he doesn't... Dub has made his choice. Now that he has committed himself to this, he has just realized, deep down, that he may - will - never see Max again.  
  
Max abandoned him. He left him in a foreign country as a stranger.  
But Dub still misses him. If being in the same home (at least, for now) as his fixation isn't making that go away...  
What will?  
  
But nothing can be done about that right now. Dub has his priorities. He will cross the Max bridge once he is fully settled down here. For now, he steels himself and heads back the way he came to continue the pursuit.  
  
Halfway up the staircase, his leg seizes. Yet he persists. He's muddled through worse.  
Nothing in the upper hallway. Another bathroom, nothing. Three more rooms, with names made of wooden animals on two of the doors. "Raban" on one, "Ignatia" on the other. Nothing in the Raban room, a bedroom in fact.  
As he gets closer to the other bedroom, his ears pick up words. German words. German phrases in a certain voice that freezes him upon recognition, his hand millimetres from the door.  
  
Wood's voice.  
  
His knees, his composure, his fears, all but crumple beneath him. By some miracle he manages to keep upright, though the letter creases in his other hand by mistake.  
He pushes the door open quietly and steps inside, everything else forgotten.  
  
And _**he**_ is there, lost in incomprehensible conversation with a toy rabbit but he is there, right in front of his eyes, the black and grey and blue, small head, sturdy body, tail, wings, perfection, better than the reconstruction, more physical, more solid, more **permanent**...  
and he turns his head towards the doorway as if to make a point, and he sees the turtle, and he stops mid-word, caught off guard...  
and a torrent of words roars up inside the newcomer's mind, ready to spill out: confirmation of promises broken and fixed, an actual admittance of the extent of his emotion, how much just the image of Wood has tormented him and kept him going both since he left...  
  
_Dub?_  
  
His name.  
He remembers it. Wood remembers his name. He recognizes him.  
Dub is undone.  
Somehow, at just the utterance of a single name - his - in that voice, any and all words are gone. His mouth is dry. Heavy. Silent, just as it was at the asylum.  
  
The raven, his raven, speaks again. _You're quiet. If you're a hallucination, you're a very convincing one. But why would you come here now? I was trying to forget about..._  
The turtle struggles with his silence.  
_Okay then. If you can't tell me why, at least prove how. Show me something that proves whether you're real or not. I'm not negotiating with any more delusions._ Then, under his breath, _Freud was bad enough._  
  
Dub has the proof. It has never left him; even when in the recovery room the second time, it hung around his neck, and is now tucked under the shell covering. Sometimes hurting him, sometimes protecting him.  
He reaches in and pulls out the claw on a string with a watery smile.  
  
_Ah. One of my souvenirs._ Wood blinks, almost shaken. He really **had** forgotten, it seems.  
Then he shakes himself. _This proves nothing except the thoroughness of my subconscious. Show me the paper you have. That might be better._  
Dub obeys, passing it over, dropping the claw to leave it on display. He does not need to hear the raven read the words aloud. He read the letter several times over while preparing to be packed inside. But he just wants to hear his love talk after weeks of deprivation.  
  
Dear esteemed colleague,  
  
I hope that life has found you well since your extended leave from the Psychiatry Clinic began. With apologies for the short notice, I hereby refer the patient Dub to you, asking you for further therapeutic and ...  
  
The words wash over him, blending, the tone reverberating inside. He catches Wood glancing at him when he opens his eyes; he doesn't know whether to look back or stare at the walls.  
  
Since you were head of the asylum at the time of Dub's admission, being constantly aware of his case history and preliminary diagnosis as a result, there is no need for me to provide explanations of such. I once again apologise that we had to send him to you in light of your temporary retirement; however, Dub himself was insistent that he be transferred to you specifically ...  
  
Wood looks at him again. Is that confusion or flattery in his eyes? Dub quickly turns to the decor.  
The whole room has a very different color scheme to the office below - oranges on the floor and pale golds on the curtains and walls covered in different shades of red, honest to god red, bright vibrant _alive_. The cot (presumably Ignatia's) is made of polished pine, still complementary to the scheme. Even the rabbit, trying to hide from the awkward scenario, is pale yellow, with a left arm covered in tiny toothmarks.  
The raven is the only splash of black and blue in the room, and is all the more beautiful for it.  
  
... only hope that his obsession with you can be curtailed and refocused into positive energy.  
  
The reading ceases. _Most definitely real, then,_ he mutters. The paper is refolded, placed down.  
_You perplex me, Dub,_ says Wood suddenly, staring at him. The shadow of the just-for-Dub promise smile flits across his beak before vanishing. _I admit that I never made it easy for you, considering my... relapse. But why did you beg the nurse to transfer you to me?_  
The turtle would laugh at the question, could he make a sound at all. Fortunately, Wood himself fills in the gap: _That was a silly thing to ask. It says as much in the letter. Obsession. That much I can't blame you for. I've been there myself. What I really meant to ask is: why are you obsessed now?_  
_I hurt you. Unintentionally, but still. Why cling to that?_  
  
Why cling to that? Inner Dub echoes, no, not inner Dub, a memory thereof, but still in his voice, pushing the breakdown to the forefront, the endless tears, the pain in his skull, his heart in pieces, memories, loss, hopelessness, inconsistent desires to continue, inconsistent desires to give up, to lose him...  
**No. Never again.**  
With that, Dub, still lacking words, envelopes Wood in a hug. The fabric is warm against his, a feeling no memory could replicate. He is breathing, his love is breathing against him, breathing, moving, physical.  
  
Slowly, softly, like someone pulling on a string, the pieces of his heart knit back together, breaking in reverse.  
  


_Dub._  
The name again, he remembered again, brings his attention back; the voice is brittle and low.  
_You still haven't answered my question. You could have gone to anyone. You could have gone **home.** Why did you come to me?_  
  
And then,  
here,  
now,  
in his new room,  
in his new home,  
in his wings,  
holding him close enough to hear both hearts beat, richly, fully,  
Dub finally says something.  
  
"I forgot how to exist without you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, while I've got you, here are some clarifications that I couldn't fit into the fic without giving Dub knowledge he wasn't supposed to have. (I'm presuming you've played the game, otherwise you wouldn't have read the fics leading up to this.)
> 
> * Ignatia = the little girl who plays with Wood at the end, therefore the one he went home with at the end of his case. [This human.](http://highperformanceturtl.deviantart.com/art/Playtime-mild-spoilers-for-locus-minoris-298735021) She is not present in the fic because her older brother, Raban, took her to the park.  
> * She is also the daughter of the paediatrician who inadvertently neglected Wood and gave him his disorder in the first place (but I think you gathered that).  
> * The yellow bunny = Lemmy, an OC I came up with specifically for the scenario. Is also in the picture ~~linked~~ above!  
>  * This part of the fic takes place on the first Saturday in February. (QTCV took place in January.)


End file.
